FileMaker 10 Subsummaries in Table View, Part 2

I've now added table view layouts to 5 tables in a development version of Studio Manager. The results are even better than expected. Using tables with multiple subsummaries with sort and find buttons delivers an incredible browsing experience.

 

In the example of my Contacts Table View, I have  subsummaries for industry and company. Sorting by Industry, Company with the button provided at the bottom of the screen yields this readable and still editable view of contacts.

Clicking the Industry column heading yields a subhead for each industry, but does not put in company headings. Clicking the Company column head shows Company headings with the employees in that company listed beneath it. The user chooses the sort and view that helps with the work at hand.

Excel vs. FileMaker 10 Table View. Move over Excel, Table View goes you one better in many situations. Excel's strength is ad hoc analysis with calculations involved. We know that lots of people use Excel as a list manager. It will even ask you if you want to make a list and switch into a lightweight database.

FileMaker is the king of the hill in the end-user database game. Excel database and standard Excel is no competition for the masters. The ease of putting buttons on the screen and making them do simple finds and sorts is unmatched. You get column resizing and reordering. You get adding columns from data in your database without going into Layout mode.

I've never experienced data browsing like this in my 25 years of building databases. One of my practices in building FileMaker systems is to have a list screen for every table in the database. I've used the List View for these so that I could label my columns the way I wanted. However, I may be replacing the list screens with my new Table Views because they are so much more dynamic and useful for quick analysis and reporting. [Part 1]